As Russian aggression shows no signs of abating, IT companies in Ukraine are looking at India to set up Offshore Development Centres (ODCs).
“In the last one month, we got nearly 70 enquiries from IT companies based in Ukraine to look at the possibility of setting up ODCs in India,” said PS Viswanath, MD & CEO, Randstad India, a recruitment firm.
Viswanathan said that Ukraine IT companies are badly affected and staring at huge penalties from their clients if they don’t deliver. All their employees have vanished to Poland and Belarus. They are in a helpless situation, and looking at India.
Uncertainty of business recovery
Due to the rising uncertainty of business recovery, many tech companies are moving their business out of the country and scouting for talent from neighbouring countries, he told BusinessLine. He added that companies in banking, utilities, oil and energy are the primary sectors that could also be hunting for Indian talent in the upcoming months.
“We think that around 65,000 jobs will get added to the Indian Job market if the war continues to impact the masses in the upcoming months. As most of the countries like Poland, Belarus, Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria depend on Ukraine to build their workforce, we see these mandates moving temporarily or permanently to India,” he said.
Ukraine is the number one IT outsourcing destination in Central & Eastern Europe, with GlobalLogic, Ciklum and Luxoft being some of the large companies looking at India. Incidentally, Ciklum - in which former Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza's technology investment platform Recognize has invested - has a large centre in Chennai.
Several established IT services and product engineering firms have a significant presence in Ukraine. Nationwide, around 50,000 technology professionals are servicing over 5,000 clients, generating over $5 billion of export revenues from, said research firm ISG.